Editorial policy
How we decide what to publish, and how we check it
In writing these guides, we choose topics by reading new studies, discussing with other parents, and drawing from our own parental experience. We work with AI-assisted tools to help write and review things before they go out. Our site is a collaborative effort, so if you think we wrote something wrong, send us a message right away. We've written our guides in plainly so you can hold us to it.
01
Our mission and who we write for
We publish practical guides for parents and caregivers of children from toddlerhood through the teenage years. We're writing for the parent who has a specific situation in front of them and twenty minutes to understand it better.
We aim to give you what you need to weigh things up: what's typical, what your options are, and what each one involves.
We write as empathetic partners and not as expert practitioners. We'd never try to stand in for someone who actually knows your child.
02
How we choose topics
Topics come from questions parents are actually asking, from studies, from readers writing in, and from the people who write for PRC with firsthand experience in raising children of their own.
We don't publish just to fill a calendar, or cover something simply because it ranks. If we can't say anything more useful than the first two search results, we'd rather leave it.
We prefer one thorough guide to five thin ones on the same subject.
We will decline a topic if nobody here can research it responsibly.
We do not create a topic page or category until there is enough substantive material to justify it.
03
How we use firsthand parent experience
Some guides are shaped by what a writer has been through with their own children. That experience is genuinely valuable, it surfaces the practical detail research papers leave out. It's a different kind of knowing, though, so we mark it as experience rather than evidence.
Where firsthand experience materially informs a guide, it appears in a clearly marked From Firsthand Experience block, separated from the researched material around it. Those blocks carry an explicit note that they describe one family's experience and are not clinical advice.
When a guide rests substantially on one person's experience, it is published under that person's name rather than the editorial team byline, because the experience belongs to them.
04
Research and sourcing standards
Where a guide makes a factual claim about child development, health or behaviour, that claim is sourced. We prioritise peer-reviewed research, national health service and public health guidance, and established professional bodies, in roughly that order.
Sources are listed at the end of the guide, with the publishing body, the year, and the date we accessed them.
We link to the original source rather than to somebody else's summary of it wherever possible.
Where the published evidence genuinely disagrees with itself, we say so instead of picking the most decisive-sounding study.
We do not cite other parenting blogs, content farms, or AI-generated material as evidence.
Single small studies are described as such, not as established findings.
If we cannot source a claim, we either remove it or reframe it as the uncertain thing it is.
05
Use of AI-assisted tools
We use AI-assisted tools in parts of our process, and we'd rather just say so than leave you wondering. They help us gather and organise research, suggest structure, draft passages and edit for clarity.
They are not used to invent facts, generate citations, fabricate personal experience, or produce a finished guide that goes live without a person working on it. Every citation is checked against the actual source by a human. Any passage that a tool drafted is read, edited and taken responsibility for by the person publishing it.
We do not generate author photographs, author biographies, or fictional experts by any means, AI-assisted or otherwise.
06
Human-reviewed before publishing
Nothing publishes automatically. Before a guide goes live, a person reads it end to end and checks the claims match the sources, that firsthand material is labelled, and that it says something genuinely useful.
Every published guide records the date it was last reviewed. Where a guide covers a health or safety-adjacent subject, review is more conservative: if we are unsure whether a passage crosses from information into advice, we cut it.
Standard wording used across the site
We combine parents' own experience with published research and a proper edit. We do use AI-assisted tools for parts of research, organising and drafting, and everything is read and edited by a person before it goes live.
07
Age ranges and developmental claims
Most of our development guides might mention typical ages for milestones like walking, talking, or sleeping. Here is what you should know about those numbers:
Think of ages as estimates, not strict deadlines. They show what is typical across large groups of kids. Every child develops at their own pace, and broad variation is completely normal.
We recognize real research. We always name the medical organization or research study behind our age ranges, along with the year it was published.
We don't average numbers. If two reliable sources define an age range differently, we show you the full range instead of combining them into a misleading single number.
Our content stays updated. Every guide shows the date it was last reviewed and links to our process for choosing sources.
These ranges are not diagnoses. Missing a typical age range is simply useful information to note or discuss with your pediatrician—it is not a medical diagnosis.
08
Health, safety, and clinical limits
Furthermore, nobody at Parents Resource Connection holds a clinical, therapeutic, medical or teaching qualification, and we never write as though we do. This is a hard limit on what we publish, not a disclaimer bolted onto the end.
We do not diagnose conditions, assess a specific child, or recommend treatment.
We do not advise on medication, dosage, or whether to seek a particular diagnosis.
For anything involving a child's physical or mental health, we point to a GP, health visitor, school or the relevant national health service rather than answering it ourselves.
Where a subject touches on immediate risk to a child, we state the limit of what an article can do and name the appropriate service.
If a qualified professional ever reviews a guide, they are named with their real credentials. Absent that, no clinical review is claimed.
09
Updating and re-reviewing guides
Guidance changes, and a guide that was accurate two years ago may not be now. Every guide carries the date it was last reviewed so a reader can judge for themselves how current it is.
Guides covering health, safety or developmental guidance are re-reviewed at least annually.
Any guide is re-reviewed sooner when the underlying research or official guidance materially changes.
Substantive changes update the review date and, where the change alters the guidance, are noted on the page.
Minor copy edits do not reset the review date, because that would make the date meaningless.
Where a guide is no longer accurate and cannot be brought up to date, we remove or de-index it rather than leave it standing.
10
Corrections
We'd much rather be corrected than carry on being wrong. Anyone can report an error, a reader, a researcher whose work we've mischaracterised, or anyone who spots a claim that doesn't hold up.
What happens when you report an error
Within 2 working days
We acknowledge the report and tell you whether we are treating it as a correction, a clarification, or a difference of interpretation.
Within 5 working days
A factual error is corrected, or we explain why we think the original stands.
On the page
A correction that changes the guidance carries a dated correction note at the foot of the guide. We do not quietly edit and pretend it never said otherwise.
Typos and broken links
Fixed without a note, because there is nothing for a reader to re-evaluate.
Corrections reach us at [email protected], or through the Report A Correction button on any guide. We keep a record of substantive corrections so patterns in what we get wrong are visible to us.
11
Advertising and independence
This site is free to read and funded by display advertising. We may also earn commission on some links, and where that applies it is disclosed on the page.
Advertisers have no input into what we cover, what we conclude, or which products a guide mentions.
Nobody can pay to appear in a guide, to be reviewed favourably, or to have criticism removed.
Sponsored content, if we ever publish it, is labelled as such and does not sit inside an editorial guide.
Commercial relationships never determine whether a guide is published or how it is framed.
Ads are placed so they do not obstruct the guide or the site's navigation.
If you believe a guide reads as though it were written for an advertiser rather than a reader, tell us. That is a correction we want to hear about.
Hold us to this
Tell us if we slip
If a guide here doesn't live up to something on this page, we'd genuinely like to know. Just point us at the guide and the bit that's off.